Without doubt we can confirm that the C64 scene is still going strong. There has been so much going on since our last issue that it would be totally impossible to try to cover it all. Then again, that is not our ambition, rather we will focus on the most important happenings as well as trying to dig up some additional dirt that you can't simply look up on the net.

First we have some very sad news to relay. On the 12th of August Swedish scener Terric/Meta was found dead. He had been missing from his home for about a week when a search party from the organisation "Missing People Sweden" located the body. For reasons unknown to us Terric had decided to end his life. Terric was a really nice guy, known for his kindness and a frequent visitor to various scene parties. Our sincere condolences go to his family and fellow group members of Meta.

That said, it's time to take a look at what the major groups have been up to lately, followed by some single news at the end.

ARMAGEDDON

When Armageddon made their comeback in 2011 it was hard to tell whether it was just a short burst of activity or the beginning of something lasting. With six cracks released so far in 2012, there is no doubt Armageddon is back! However, at the moment Moloch seems to be doing all the work, so we hope to see more from Warlock too.

Members: Moloch, Warlock

ARSENIC

Arsenic kickstarted the year by holding an internal meeting with Yazoo, Sphinx and Axis present. They also released the small one-file demo "Hauptschule Klassentreffen" there. Since then Arsenic have continued to release smaller one file demos at meetings and parties.

Two music collections also made it out, "Hertzblut" containing tunes from Devilock and "Neotunes 2 Light" with old classic C64 tunes.

Lotus and Devia from The Ancients have also joined Arsenic. They might be the last ones allowed to join for some time, since the management feel the group is growing a bit too fast.

After winning the prestigious compo at LCP last year, it's been awfully quiet from the guys in Booze Design. Then again that's how it usually seems to be before they shock us with another kick-ass demo. This time we might have to wait a while for that to happen though, as both Jackasser and HCL have become daddies (again) lately, HCL for the third time!

During summer, Dane started composing again - not only the soundtrack to this issue of Attitude - he also started up his Soundcloud with a number of brand new tunes as well as a previously unreleased beta for the "Edge Of Disgrace" soundtrack. Rumors say that he is piling up for a music disk to come.

Archmage left Booze in June and teamed up with his fellow Norwegians in Offence.

RaveGuru is enjoying life in Bali and Jackasser is working on a game for iOS.

So, we won't see any new Booze demo for a while, but Jackasser reassures "please remain seated, we will be back".

Members: HCL, Dane, Jailbird, RaveGuru, Jackasser

CREST

Crest haven't released anything so far in 2012, so the main reason for listing them here is to point finger and stress them a bit... Consider finger pointed, guys!

However, rumours say they have a smaller demo and some graphics in the pipe for X'2012.

The Finns in Dekadence competed with their small demo "Ihan Paska Produ" in the C64 demo compo at Kozmoz 2012, ending up at 12th place, after several fake-entries. Judging from the text in the demo they weren't very pleased with the production themselves, but to be fair it should have been ranked way higher. We suspect the Finnish tradition of getting totally hammered on vodka before voting might have something to do with the low score, as this production ain't bad at all.

Just before summer they also put out the invitation for the Assembly 2012 old school demo compo.

FLT started out the year by winning the demo compo at Datastorm 2012 - third year in a row - with "One Quarter". This demo also saw an unexpected guest appearance by Danko.

Then Pantaloon, Bacchus and JBM arranged a Fairlight Cruise in April to celebrate the Fairlight 25 year anniversary. From what we've heard, it was an awesome event - featuring 30-something old-timers including Strider, Celebrandil, Danko, Smash, Watchman, Rowdy and many more. We can safely assume that the glasses were not empty... for long!

Memberwise, they gained Avalon from TRIAD in the end of 2011, but instead lost Abaddon who joined up with... wait for it... TRIAD! Old-timer Danko decided to start up again and joined forces with FairLight, while Dwangi and Sledge were declared inactive.

FLT was also represented at Edison 2012, where Danko took the gold with his tune "Ignorance", while Wiklund settled with silver for his "Nice Pantaloons" tune.

Swedish duo Fatzone hosted a smaller multiformat meeting at Malmix place in June with various C64 and MSX sceners present.

Initially intended for Datastorm 2012, the guys are working on a new C64 demo that hopefully will be finished before the end of this year. It will probably be the last Fatzone demo.

Members: Malmix, Pezac

GENESIS PROJECT

Without a doubt, G*P is one of the most active groups on the C64 today - operating across all disciplines.

First party of the year - Datastorm 2012 (co-hosted by G*P) - was a real success for Europe's No. 1: bronze in the demo compo with the charming "Holy Crap!", a first from Redcrab & H Macaroni featuring Truck + dogs on the beach. Grand slam in the music compo with 5 G*P musicians in the top 8! Brandon Walsh came #1 with Mr.Death close behind.

At Revision in April, G*P competed in the mixed demo with newcomer WertStahl and his self-made demo "Flashbang" which was very well-received. An interesting debut and definitely a guy too keep our eyes on!

South-Swedish sceners enjoyed the datakalsong at Gubbdata in April (also hosted by G*P). Another great win for the G*P music division with X-Jammer and new member Stinsen in the front seat. Uka placed second in the graphics compo with "Lobo".

The demo "Are we there yet?" won the compo at Flashback 2012. Put together by Mermaid with music by Mr. Death, this demo is a feast for both eyes and ears. July saw a demo called "World in progress" which was made for the Syntax summer party featuring a whole bunch of G*P members.

On the cracking front, the dynamic duo Hedning & Zyron has been working tirelessly to push out new releases also in 2012. Some of the more memorable cracks this year include "Jars' Revenge", "Lincoln" and "Xyphus".

Quite a stirr occured when Laxity decided to NTSC fix the G*P crack of "Underground" earlier this year. This was not appreciated by the G*P members, and although much of the debate revolved around Laxity not following the CSDb rules for adding credits to a release, a blind fool could see how the whole debacle annoyed G*P. As Laxity points out, releasing an NTSC fix of another group's PAL only crack used to be common practice way back.

However, we certainly understand G*P becoming irritated, because the keyword here is "way back", as in way before Laxity as a group even existed. Later, but before NTSC fixing became borderline unnecessary, the common practise was rather fixing groups and cracking groups teaming up and having an agreement on this sort of thing, something Laxity obviously failed to obtain. To make matters worse, Laxity even fixed a bug in the G*P crack, thus also putting their fingers in another man's crack (phun intended)! Of course, it would have been better for Laxity if they simply had obtained the original and made their own crack instead, and then fixed that. As much as old fixing crews such as Empire, Demonix, NEI, C0derz, TSM and so on were appreciated, there is no denying this is another time (ultimately manifested by the demise of virtually all fixing crews many years ago).

Memberwise, Itch joined up with them for a few weeks, but didn't really feel at home and soon returned to TRIAD again. Later on they gained Swedish coders Nova (ex. Flash inc./S451), Fix (ex. TRSi), Swedish musician Stinsen and German coder WertStahl. In early 2012, Hedning was promoted to organizer by Sixx.

Genesis Project will have an eight-man strong crew at X'2012, including old-timers L.A. Style and Widdy. Given their track record, it's probably a safe bet that G*P will appear in most compos this year!

Glance didn't live up to their promise to release a smaller demo composed of the effect from their unreleased invitro for the cancelled "Main Party", mixed with other content, during 2011. Actually, there were no releases at all from them during 2011, and not this far during 2012 either. However, they are working on their demo for X'2012, so let's hope that one actually materializes.

Members: Arcane, Datura, Endo, Hydrogen, Nightlord, Norvax

HOAXERS

Norwegian Hoaxers made an unexpected (but very welcome) return at LCP 2011 after an almost 10-year long scene break. "Snolgkos" with its winding dot scroll was followed by "Naked grinder", which featured graphics from guest stars Celtic, Joe and Pal.

Response has been really busy lately, releasing tunes for several parties this year, perhaps we'll see something for X'2012 too? Curt Cool is also active and is producing tunes for upcoming releases.

Firehawk has recently become a father again, congrats! Between changing diapers he is crafting some new routines and he's also developed a framework which will facilitate the creation of trackmos. Hoaxers demo maker?

A new coder, Rudi, joined Hoaxers in February. Originally a PC coder, he has just begun with C64. Let's keep an eye on this guy!

Grasstust (Zircon) is back and has made a couple of logos. More stuff is expected from his direction. Skurk is working on a couple of promising new/old school parts.

BHF is tirelessly working to revive "new and old members". We've heard about his alluring trips all over the country. How many Norwegian sceners are yet to be found (that haven't already joined Offence)? The quest continues!

Hoaxers were aiming for X'2012 with their new demo "Frantic 3" but have unfortunately concluded they won't make it in time. Instead it will be released next year, at LCP perhaps? Plans are to release something small at Kindergarden this year too.

Triggered by the boiling activity on the cracking scene, Didi and Goat decided to join in and made a comeback half-way through 2011. This year they have really turned up the pace - literally bombing with cracks, being the only group able to combat and win over G*P in quantity.

The large number of releases from Laxity has stirred up a discussion regarding the cracking scene vs quality. The endless hunt for firsties seems to come at any price. Is it really necessary to release all unreleased games? Obviously, different groups have different views on this.

Also, several (!) fake labels have been connected to Laxity. In a time when fake releases are mostly yawned upon unless being something very special, Laxity obviously think it's a great idea to waste time on putting out crap that no one cares about or even think is funny anymore. Naturally, sceners in general were not impressed.

Some sceners also expressed doubts on the recruitment of Secret Man, judging from his track record as a person with a questionable past. Time will tell if he will clean up his act under the guidance of the other Laxity members.

On the positive side, old member O'Dog decided to make a comeback to the scene and his old group, now being active in Laxity again.

Without doubt, Laxity have a strong line-up with especially Goat and Didi who, when concentrating on things that matter, can move mountains. Their latest release, a mail version of Mollusk Redux 101% with 8 trainers and a cute new crack intro to go with it, is a perfect proof of their abilities. Also, Laxity have produced several brand new and cool crack intros lately!

Other neat releases put out recently and worth to mention are Jimmy Business and the 100% version of Market Forces.

Members: DanDee, Didi, Goat, O'Dog, Secret Man

N0STALGIA

Keeping up a high level of activity, Nostalgia have been putting out another bunch of great releases since the last issue. Too many to namedrop them all, actually. It's clear that their recruitment of Tom-Cat has paid off, being especially skilled when it comes to Easy Flash adaptions, he's been involved in more or less all the Nostalgia releases lately and highly contributed to the team. One EF release that we just have to mention is the awesome Leaderboard Golf + Tournament Courses, containing loads of holes (and not to mention a great Nostalgia intro too).

They lost Archmage and gained Lemming while The Ignorance returned to active duty.

Offence have been quite active during 2012, releasing four demos so far. They came in on fourth place at Datastorm 2012 with their demo "Fifteen minutes of lame" and then scored third place in the mixed demo compo at StreamNine with "Realstream". In addition, they also released "Wild", featuring graphics from the world's youngest scener (!) and a tribute demo to Zaphod.

According to Pal, their productivity demo-wise is basically a matter of team spirit. "We just bounce the big bag of ideas and do our best putting it together in a nice way". Although he admits that he personally had a lot of influence over the two bigger demos they've put out since their comback, the plan is to develop a creative environment for all members so everyone can realise their ideas. Perhaps hinting at people taking demos a bit too serious, Pal also notes that "a lot of people tend to forget that the C64 is not the Hollywood silver screen, the C64 is more and therefore less, we are just people trying to do great things in our spare time. It is not our work!"

As noted earlier, Archmage joined up with his fellow Norwegians in Offence.

Rumor has it that Offence is actually working on a coop together with XAKK, Cosmos Designs, Starion and FIG! If this project materializes, remember where your heard it first!

Onslaught have expanded on their legal activities this year. At Gubbdata 0.9 they released their demo "Spires", as coded by Elder0010 and Freshness, with graphics by Almighty God and music by Psycho8580. A very nice production that scored second place in the compo, closely behind TRIAD's winning contribution. Representing Onslaught at Gubbdata were Ed and Zzap69.

Things went even better at Flashback 2012, where Onslaught placed first with their demo "Better", coded by new member Algorithm and Conjuror with music by SoNiC and graphics by CONS. Other Onslaught members contributed with music (Adam) and graphics (Enthusi and CONS) for the party.

Recently, at Nordlicht 2012, CONS came in second recently with his first ever hires entry called "Moment of Truth". Conrad has been mixing it up with some nice music entries too, most recently placing quite high at the Silesia 6 party.

Also issue #59 of Vandalism News has been released, as usual in coop with Wrath Designs.

On the cracking front the group have been releasing some of the newest commercial games first and protecting the sales on a commercial level with their non-download link policy, a good example of this is their release of the highly anticipated Soulless. It's mainly Slator who is doing the actual cracking for the group at the moment. Just as a few other cracking groups, Onslaught has clearly sided with quality over quantity, and hope that quality cracks will make them stand out in the noisy crowd. Also The Ignorance joined up with them, releasing the 101% version of Mollusk Redux.

On the horizon is Vandalism News #60, hopefully featuring a long awaited new outfit coded by Crimson/Wrath Designs. Jazzcat is also working on edition #4 of his independent mag Recollection. Onslaught is hoping to release another demo or two by the end of the year, if time permits.

Just before 2011 turned into 2012 Oxyron released a neat one-filer to celebrate their 20th anniversary, fittingly entitled "20 years Oxyron". Of course, many sceners took the opportunity to honor one of the most influential demo groups ever on their birthday.

In late May Bitbreaker joined up to function as a coder. Shortly thereafter Veto won the mixed graphics compo at Revision 2012 with a piece of art entitled "Eye of the storm".

The Swedes in Panda Design started out 2012 by handing in two tunes "Natural Constructor" and "I tidevarvets sorl" and one piece of graphics "Go back to Oblivion" for the compos at Datastorm 2012. Frost succeeded the best and was awarded third place in the gfx compo.

Then Frost attended the Hackerence party in Harn0sand, bringing with him a cool one-file demo from Panda, although with the not so very original name "Hackerence 2012". Especially Swedes might be familiar with the Hackerence line of parties. Although having participants from the C64 and Amiga scene during the years, Hackerence was mostly known for hosting lots of Atari sceners in the past. However the party was put to rest after the year 2000. Seems like they are back in 2012 again!

RadiantX came in fifth at the Revision 2012 music compo with "Burning chips", and then again fifth at Birde22 with "Fission Rocket". At the end of July, Frost attended the Syntax Summer Party and came in third in the mixed gfx compo with "Stefan Scheike from the movie "In the Name of the Birch". A good picture with perhaps the longest name in history?

Members: RadiantX, Klegg, Frost

TRIAD

Since the last issue, there has been quite some membership shuffling in TRIAD. Itch quit the scene the day after LCP 2011, feeling burnt out. After some months of rest, he instead joined up with G*P. Then Wiggen was put on the inactive list again, after failing to return to activity.

Avalon made a tough decision to leave the group for FairLight, to hook up with his old Wrath-pal Oxidy who once again regained interest in the scene. Some time later, Spot announced his withdrawal from the C64 scene altogether, trying to gain more time for his Amiga activities in Up Rough and his work developing apps.

However, reinforcements were soon to arrive as well. First, new Finnish graphician Romppainen was recruited after showing his worth in the Rambo-competition (he turned out sharing first place in the jury verdict, when CreaMD finally got his head out of his ass and announced the results).

Then we saw the return of Lynx, a previously retired cracker who used to be a member of Hitmen and Atlantis, instantly joining up with TRIAD and engaging in cracking again.

Another two crackers came aboard with the recruitment of Archimedes and his friend Aristotle. Aristotle was later put on the inactive list because of lack of time due to personal commitments, and Archimedes quit the scene after a short but intense time in the group.

Things didn't stop there though, as famous Swedish coders Ruk, Houbba and Icon all made comebacks to the scene and joined the mummyship, topped with Abaddon, previously in FairLight. Also, Itch decided TRIAD was indeed where he belongs and returned to the group.

Then Bepp was promoted to co-organiser to help Taper handle the administrative side of things, in addition to his usual tasks. Finally (just a few hours ago actually), Sirols was moved to the inactive list for the time being.

With all those membership changes, did TRIAD have the time to produce and release anything? Nine cracks have been put out this far in 2012, both new titles and old but previously unreleased goods. A whole bunch of members have collaborated on the cracks, including Lynx, Bepp, Taper, Iopop, Archimedes, Ruk and even Sailor taking occasional breaks from retirement. Sailor and Tao even produced a new crack intro each to add to the fun!

A bunch of TRIAD members were present at Datastorm in Gothenburg, including Bepp, Taper, Cash, Ne7 and also retired member Midnight Mover showed up. At the party, Ne7 scored fourth place in the music compo with "Clouded Memories".

Then it was time for Gubbdata 0.9 where TRIAD was represented by Bepp, Taper, Iopop, Itch and King Fisher. The demo "Chicanery" as concieved by Ruk, Houbba, Itch, Tao, Dalezy, Ne7 and Twoflower won the demo compo there. Dalezy and Ne7 also competed in the music compo, scoring fourth and third place respectively. To popular success, Bepp also played the watering-pot live at the party.

During summer, a small demo based around Romppainen's picture of Meiko Kaji from Flashback 2012 was released. It's entitled "Burden of grudge" and involved people were Romppainen, Ruk, Ne7, Twoflower and Taper.

In July TRIAD held an internal meeting in Umea (northern Sweden). It turned out to be the most packed TRIAD gathering in many years, featuring Ruk, Houbba, Twoflower, Icon, Tao, Iopop and Bepp. It was two awesome days full of demos, coding, beer, taco chips and box digging...

At the meeting work was started on a graphics collection to display hires images that were made with the same limitations as the C64 has, but was not originally made for or shown on a real C64. In the end it turned out to be a nice little production that called "Liberation".

The bond is strong between TRIADeers - active as well as inactive members. In July, retired cracker Quorthon visited Taper together with his family. Of course, C64 stuff was checked and memories re-visited. Bepp ran into old TRIAD cracker Injun Inc at an event in Stockholm earlier this summer. Injun has totally left the old school and is nowadays enjoying life as CEO.

To much critical acclaim TRSi released their excellent game "Jar's Revenge" in early April. Just two days later they also put out a demo, "Krawall Deluxe", which scored second place in the mixed demo compo at Revision 2012.

Continuing to release quality stuff, in the end of July they put out "Vampires Empire" for the C64DTV.

At Nordlicht 2012, StreeTuff asked Devilock/Arsenic to join up with TRSi. A few days after the party he decided to join, so Devilock is now both in TRSi and Arsenic.

Another newsflash connected to TRSi was the recent announcement from their old rivals in Tristar who split away instead of going through the merger with RSi back in the days. We don't usually do cut & paste journalism, but just this once we decided to quote the whole statement from Tristar as it's quite interesting from a historical point of view:

"As you may've noticed - there is TRSi and there is also Tristar and since many years, there are battles about who should keep the name 'Tristar'. There is the storyline of Flynn and Irata, both merged Tristar and Red Sector to TRSi and there is also the storyline of Delaware and Gandalf who still continued Tristar. Both groups fighting each other with rude arguments and at the end it leads to the fact that friendship between indivduals becomes simply impossible due the fact that one belongs to TRSi and the other one belongs to Tristar...

It's not a matter of who is right and who's wrong. It's a matter of single people that need every time to think about who stays in which group... A matter of people that may become good friends without THIS old war... As you may imagine, this can't be the right way and so, we decided to set this name free for anything related to the demo scene. Tristar will be hold in our archives and as a good memory - but we will never again release anything demo scene related that belongs to Tristar. We will hold a little party in Wuppertal on the 15th of September, 2012 - a Saturday. This will be the date, where Tristar will stop ALL demo scene related things... But this will be also the date something new will be born... Regards, Das Oberkommando."

So, it seems like TRSi won the battle at last. Or Tristar turned out quite not as stubborn, depending on how you see it...

Wrath Designs were represented at Gubbdata 0.9 by Ed and Joe. Ed came in at 7th and last place in the music competition with "Mellow", probably a tune a bit too experimental for the audience. Joe won the gfx compo with his piece of art entitled "Air".

In June, Joe competed with "Reflected" in the gfx compo at Flashback 2012, this time he scored second place. Also, as noted previously, another issue of Vandalism News (#59) was released together with Onslaught.

Memberwise no changes occured for quite a while, but we have noted that Stash seems awfully absent from scene life these days, not showing up on boards or at parties like he used to in the past. This time his absence seems not to be drug-related but rather soccer-related, as sources say he wastes a lot of time being a supporter for the local soccer team in Malmoe, Malmoe FF. A total waste of time, in other words.

Members: Clone, Crimson, Djinn, Ed, Joe, Zealot, Stash, Savage

SINGLE NEWS

Camelot are working on getting their demo ready for X. Rumors say it will contain unreleased parts from past heroes Glasnost, Rex and Raz who now have returned!

Frantic/Hack n'Trade was promoted to co-sysop on Antidote, serving alongside sysop Taper and old co-sysop Jucke for the greater good of the BBS. Also, HT gained a new member when Swiss professional mountain-climber Ant1 joined as coder and musician. According to Goto8o, his strong sides are that he codes fast and totally retarded!

Two new members joined Protovision, Achim (coder, graphician) and Trixter (news guy). Also, the Protovision shop was closed for some time for a complete overhaul. The new shop offers also digital downloads of the games. The physical copies are now strictly limited, so in case you're interested in a boxed version of a game, you better be quick!

Censor and FairLight had a beer meeting in Stockholm. Bob/Censor showed up as did Ugha and Blackdroid/Wrath Designs. According to rumors Censor have several new effects ready for their comeback! Bob tried to bribe Pantaloon with shitloads of beer to join Censor (it didn't work, but Pantaloon got shitloads of beer).

We asked TheRyk what was behind him leaving Avatar, and he pointed out that he is still on good terms with The Shadow and the other Avatar guys. However, there was a disagreement between him and The Shadow on cracking philosophy. "I won't go into great detail, but I had the feeling that Avatar as well as their enemies and many other groups took the whole matter far too seriously, from my point of view. Pointless CSDb shitstorms between certain groups made me more and more sick of cracking, seeing myself rather as a cracking coder than a cracker, anyway." Instead, he decided to form a new group together with Spider-J, known as Mayday! (for fun, not for fame).

HBH/Abnormal has awoken again and is currently scouring the net for orries. It's been 23 years since their last crack, but never say never...

Speaking of HBH, he's got plans with BHF to do a new Abnormal demo, based on old routines from 89-92. Perhaps in a co-op with Hoaxers.

South-Swedish sceners Bepp/TRIAD and Mahoney are expecting little ones in October (though not as a co-op!). They will be attending X'2012 through Scenesat. And PAL/Offence will be a father again in February. Congrats guys!

Mahoney is rumored to guest star in an upcoming X release with some very noise sounds.